


Patience

by SimplexityJane



Series: Resistance [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character(s) of Color, Gen, Hair, Laying Bricks, Oh Background Sweet Background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3275246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are few things Hermione can do to make herself ready to face Voldemort, but in order to fight, to be able to duel without distractions, there is one specific thing she has control over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience

**Author's Note:**

> None of the other one-shots in this series are necessary to understand this one, though the main story will draw from all of them. There should be one more one-shot featuring Hermione's POV before the main story really kicks off.

When Hermione got home after the end of Fourth Year, she looked at herself in the mirror, searching for any flaw she could find.

Dark skin, hair that was as coarse as her father’s, but eyes like Mum’s, and, now that she’d changed her teeth, something pleasant about her smile (and that wasn’t right, of course, but she’d hated that feeling, how _different_ she was, even if Snape had taken points from Slytherin when her teeth started growing, even though he'd tried to help her).

She was a girl still, only fifteen, and not meant to go to war.

There was very little she could do to change that, at least in certain regards. She couldn’t make herself older, not without consequences, and as much as she might feel it necessary, Time Turners would _not_ be approved for her by this Ministry, not with Fudge all but declaring that Voldemort had been dead all along.

Idiot. It was insufferable, really, how stupid and _weak_ Fudge was. Only cowards refused to acknowledge reality.

Hermione had never been a coward.

So she looked at her hair, the only part of her that she _could_ change, at least for the moment. At the Yule Ball she’d used so much potion in it that she hadn’t recognized herself, and everyone had cooed over it like it was something to be appreciated, bushy-haired Hermione Granger turning herself into someone prettier, more _acceptable_.

 _Prettier_ wouldn’t win a war, though, which made her smile.

Really, it was only practical. Like most witches, Hermione’s hair had a life of its own, growing at an unnatural rate if she was upset with it, even changing depending on her mood. She’d seen Harry’s do the same, ruffling in an unseen wind whenever he and Malfoy faced each other.

She couldn’t cut it, and she couldn’t waste the potions she’d need to straighten it. There was really only one solution.

Her parents didn’t like it, but they respected her bodily autonomy, at least when it came to parts of her body that weren’t teeth (and, to be fair, changes that weren't motivated by self-esteem issues).

“It is a process, remember. If you aren’t patient, the locks _will_ come undone.” Warning said for the fifth time, the barber proceeded to pull at her scalp and sculpt her hair with wax, and Hermione reminded herself that she actually _did_ want to look like this, and no, this was no worse than when Mum and Dad would take turns brushing her hair when she was little.

They _were_ pretty, she thought. She had never liked braids (she had had a tender scalp, and then no desire to sit in a chair for hours and hours), but dreadlocks, like the ones in Dad’s old pictures (back before she was born, when he and Mum marched in parades and kissed in front of people to prove a point), those were beautiful. They wouldn’t come undone after they finished locking, and she could tie them back in battle more easily than a cloud of hair.

They also added a sort of weight to her delicate bones that hadn’t been there before, even if they looked odd like this, not yet locked. She could imagine them defining her again, and she liked the idea.

When her parents let her go to Grimmauld Place she felt a prickle of unease, but she held her head high. She was a Gryffindor, and she had grown several centimeters, a growth spurt that fit the heat. She watched Ron’s eyes go wide taking her in right before he smiled, and she saw the covert glances Ginny gave her, nothing short of appraising.

Molly exclaimed about how lovely she looked with her new robes and didn’t say another word, but Hermione found a picture on her pillow a few nights later of three red-haired people that she couldn’t, at first, tell apart (except in height). They had identical haircuts and fierce expressions, and Molly looked so astoundingly like her sons that Hermione wondered how she could look at them now.

Remembering the fate of the Prewetts, she put the picture away, ignoring the unease that had nothing to do with her hair and looking in the mirror instead.

She was still a girl, but she was a girl who had made her choice, one who had chosen to fight. 

To further that, she opened the book she had _borrowed_ from the library for the summer and closed her eyes while she imagined the strong creature, the hunter ( _the_ females _of this species are the hunters_ , she remembered), that her Animagus meditations had shown her she could be.

That too would take a lot of patience, but Hermione Granger had never met a challenge she wouldn’t face, and this could actually be fun as well as useful.


End file.
